Is reduced health-related quality of life a primary manifestation of fibromyalgia? A comparative study with Rheumatoid arthritis

Abstract

Background

Fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) is a chronic pain condition associated with a significant reduction in health-related quality of life (HRQoL). This study compared the different components of HRQoL between FMS and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, and evaluated the relationships between HRQoL and clinical and emotional factors in FMS and RA patients.

Method

Women with FMS (n = 80), RA (n = 43) and healthy women (n = 67) participated in the study. HRQoL was assessed by the SF-36 survey. Associations between HRQoL and symptom severity were assessed by correlation and multiple linear regression analyses.

Results

FMS patients displayed lower values for all SF-36 variables than RA patients and healthy participants, while RA patients showed lower values for all SF-36 variables than healthy participants. These group differences persisted after statistically controlling for demographic, clinical and emotional variables. Clinical and emotional factors were inversely associated with SF-36 scores in the overall FMS + RA sample. Depression and fatigue were the strongest negative predictors. However, after the statistical control of the effect of diagnosis (FMS vs. RA) in the regression analysis, most of the associations disappear.

Conclusions

The fact that group differences in HRQoL remained highly significant after statistically controlling of group differences in clinical symptom severity, and that associations between clinical symptoms and HRQoL disappear when the type of diagnosis was considered in the regression analysis, suggest that impairment of HRQoL could be considered a primary feature of FMS.

Keywords:

• Health-related quality of life
• fibromyalgia
• rheumatoid arthritis
• pain
• anxiety
• depression

Acknowledgements

To participants.

Author’s contirbution

Carmen M. Galvez-Sánchez: Conceptualization; Data curation; Formal analysis; Funding acquisition; Investigation; Methodology; Roles/Writing—original draft. Stefan Duschek: Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing—review & editing. Gustavo A. Reyes del Paso: Conceptualization; Funding acquisition; Methodology; Project administration; Supervision; Validation; Visualization; Writing—review & editing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Data availability statement

The data are publicly available at the website: https://osf.io/2gb54/?view_only=4eb398b6c7874c8bb2d278f4bcf359b9

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by a grant from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities co-financed by FEDER funds [grant number RTI2018-095830-B-I00]; and an FPU pre-doctoral grant from the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport [grant number FPU2014-02808].